Our past NLT picks: Where are they now?

Looking back at Moller International, Organic Bouquet, and Xethanol. Plus: 15 other companies we've previously profiled as the Next Little Thing.

True Jeans
True Jeans
Romney Evans and Jessica Arredondo didn't launch TrueJeans.com until December 2006, six months behind schedule. But "it paid off to take our time," Evans says. The site asks users to enter their measurements and then gives them a ranking of the best-fitting jeans culled from dozens of name brands. The results are so effective that True Jeans has attracted a loyal following: it boasts a 14% conversion rate of casual browsers into registered users compared to the industry average of 2%; it is also one of the top three search results for "jeans" in Google. The average sale is nearly $200, up 50% compared to the months just after the site launched. One popular new feature: Type in the name of a celebrity to find out what brand of jeans they're wearing.

Evans and Arredondo have found that their site gets a lot of love from bloggers. When True Jeans was mentioned in Grumperina.com, a knitting enthusiast blog, its readers bought more than $20,000 in merchandise within 48 hours. True Jeans's founders invited about a dozen bloggers into the company's Woburn, Mass., facility, and they gave them ideas for new niche markets, such as plus-sized jeans, that the company pursued in 2007.

Xethanol

Organic Bouquet

Ocean Power Technologies

On Demand Books

Moller International

Migo Software

HyperActive Technologies

Biophan Technologies

Spine Wave

Freedom-2

Parker Boston Group

AbTech

John Fluevog Shoes

Regeneration Technologies (RTI)

LipoSonix

O'Live Spas

True Jeans

Zaiger Genetics
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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.